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Hubway Expansion Station Locations Not Always Optimally Located

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Boston Bikes and Hubway are in the midst of a public input process for adding shared bicycle stations to several neighborhoods in Boston. Not only are these additions welcome for the general public, but the city has decided to use a local start-up, CoUrbanize, to solicit input. CoUrbanize has a map- and tag-based comment database, and seems like a good, simple platform in the often-confusing public comment sphere. So all systems are in place to get some good comments, and get the stations on the street, right?

Not really, because instead of putting the stations in thoughtful locations where they will do the most good, they are scattered across the study area and located in places where they make no sense (while leaving out obvious locations like major commercial corridors and transit stations). So instead of having a good discussion about the merits and detractions of various locations, the public is now discussing how some of these locations make no sense at all as bike sharing locations (at least in the current iteration of bike share), and why other, disparate locations, would work much better. This seems less productive than would be desirable.

An issue seems to be that the station maps were created to cover as much of the map as possible without much thought to whether the locations were best of bike sharing. This seems like a political play to keep constituents happy, but seems to assume that constituents will be content if their neighborhood is covered by a circle on a map, but not care whether or not there is a useful network of shared bicycles. The Jamaica Plan expansion—the largest of the three proposed—is a good example of how this plays out. Most of the study area is in or near a circle buffered around a location. However, the way in which the stations were placed means that there are no bikes at any Orange Line station, and that the southern portion of the Centre Street business district is underserved as well. For anyone with more than a passing interest in Hubway—and most public commenters likely fall in to this camp—the illogic of some of these station placement is obvious.

There are three neighborhoods being studied right now: Jamaica Plain/Roxbury, South Boston and Charlestown. All of them seem amenable to bike sharing. Yet several of the locations chosen in each bear little resemblance to successful bike sharing locations. Let’s review several important factors in siting a bike share kiosk, which I’ll define as

The Five -tions of Bike Sharing

  • Population density (there needs to be someone to use it)
  • Destination (it needs to be somewhere people want to go)
  • Elevation (bike share locations on hilltops require frequent rebalancing as people take advantage of gravity in one direction only)
  • Connection (they need to be part of a dense network)
  • Transportation (bike share needs to complement existing transportation infrastructure)
While these are certainly not the only factors necessary for a successful bike sharing system, they are quite important. The proposed locations, in many cases, fail one or more of these tests. In addition, logical, and in some cases obvious, locations were overlooked. It certainly seems that they were chosen not to become part of the existing network, but instead to cover the map. This may be an unfortunate part of the planning process, but in this case it seems to just gum up the works.
Here is some short commentary on the locations:
Jamaica Plain / Roxbury is a fertile location to grow Hubway. There is significant existing bicycle infrastructure, good transit and density, and a burgeoning bicycle culture. A logical system would follow existing transit corridors—Centre Street, the Southwest Corridor (transit and bike path) and Washington Street—in JP, and similar corridors in Roxbury. (I will admit that I know less about the transportation infrastructure in Roxbury than in JP.) Instead, locations are put in some rather inconceivable locations:
  • JP-1 fails due to its location atop Mission Hill. Which is steep! It has population and destination, but would likely require frequent balancing as riders took bikes down the hill but walked up. This would be better moved to the VA Hospital on South Huntington or to Jackson Square, which inexplicably falls outside any of the circles, despite being a major transit hub with significant new development taking place.
  • JP-2 is a logical location, at a business node on a dense transit corridor.
  • JP-3 makes no sense and fails on all five of the -tions above. It is in a relatively sparsely-populated part of JP, away from any transportation infrastructure and high up on a hill. In addition, the only way to access the rest of the proposed and existing network is by navigating the bicycle-unfriendly Pond Street-Arborway corridor. This location will certainly not come to be any time soon, and it’s disingenuous to propose it.
  • JP-4 lies on the Southwest Corridor but is, for whatever reason, halfway in between the Green Street and Forest Hills Orange Line stations. Perhaps it would be a good location in the future, but the first priority should be locating bikes at the stations themselves. Furthermore, there are no locations anywhere near Centre Street through the heart of Jamaica Plain, and this location is about as far from Centre Street as any location along the Southwest Corridor.
  • JP-5 is at Upham’s Corner in Roxbury and is a decent location for a station, although it is somewhat far from other locations.
  • JP-6 is a good location in Egleston Square, but again suffers from the fact that there are no nearby stations, especially along the Orange Line. Egleston was once an elevated station, and Hubway could be a good resource for getting to and from the current Orange Line stations, but if the Orange Line is eschewed, it loses some usefulness.
  • JP-7 is similar to the location above, although at least closer to the current Hubway station at Roxbury Crossing.
South Boston is another good location for bike sharing. It is quite dense and located in close proximity to the Downtown area, but lacks rapid transit except on the western fringe. One issue is that it is surrounded by three sides by water, so connectivity to the rest of the system is a bit of an issue. And while the three stations proposed do not provide coverage for the whole of the neighborhood, they do not fall as far short as some of the locations in Jamaica Plain. It helps that there are existing Hubway stations at Red and Silver Line rapid transit stations on the north and west sides of South Boston, so these stations can act as feeders to there, and to downtown Boston as well. I don’t know Southie that well, but this chart (from Southie Bikes) is a great representation of why Hubway should do quite well there.
Charlestown‘s main issue is that the proposed stations do not complement the existing stations in Charlestown that well—let alone the rest of the system. (NB: there is a new station at the new Spaulding Hospital not shown on this map.) C-2 is a logical spot at the Charlestown Community Center. But C-1 is located between two existing stations. And there are no proposed locations at either the Community College or Sullivan Square Orange Line stations, or logical connections to the Hubway locations in Cambridge or Somerville. While C-3 is labeled as “Sullivan Square,” it is quite a distance from the actual Sullivan Square MBTA station. As the roads in Sullivan are redesigned and as the area is (hopefully) developed in to something more than an array of highways and parking lots, the station may be differently located. But for now, it should be located at the MBTA station, where it can provide connectivity not only to the new and existing Charlestown stations, but to Somerville as well.
It is good to see the City partnering with CoUrbanize to invite public comment for these location, and the comments—some of them my own—have certainly hit on where these stations should go. Hopefully the Hubway expansion steers clear of some of these less-than-desirable spots. Luckily, the stations are portable and easily moved, so, unlike most infrastructure, the system can be rejiggered if it is not optimally sited at first. But it would be even better to have picked better locations from the outset.

Longfellow Bike Traffic

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I usually cross the Longfellow Bridge by bicycle around 7:30 a.m. It’s before the peak of the rush hour, and while I’m not alone on two wheels, it’s not too crowded. Twice this week, however, I’ve been crossing the bridge eastbound around 8:30. And both times, when I’ve reached the light at the end of the bridge, there was a veritable traffic jam of bicyclists, with a lineup of 10 two-wheelers waiting to turn right on to Charles or go straight up Cambridge. We’ve had a long string of great cycling weather (sunny, dry and cool), Hubway is in full swing, and we’re recovering from the marathon fiasco. So there are a lot of bicyclists.

From this small sample, I’m going to make some big extrapolations. I sleuthed out the traffic counts from the intersection from a Red Line / Blue Line connector document (pdf) and sussed out that it is a 100 second light cycle—that it repeats 36 times per hour. Assuming a constant ten cyclists per light cycle for an hour, this would equate to 360 bicycles across the Longfellow in an hour. Is this a big number? I think so. Here’s why:

  • This is more than half as many bicyclists as vehicles. Peak morning eastbound car traffic is 707 vehicles per hour. Now, the Longfellow is mainly a transit bridge, and at peak hour the Red Line carries more than 10,000 vehicles. Plus, vehicle traffic decreases (as it has in the Kendall area) and bicyclists’ numbers continue to climb.
  • Bicyclists have a sub-optimal facility on the Longfellow. In other words, the bike lane kind of sucks. It’s bumpy, narrow and squeezes down at the Boston end of the bridge (although it is better-paved there). The future lane will be a bit wider, although to preserve two lanes of inbound traffic it won’t have a buffer built in. Still, it won’t be as squeezed as it is now. (MassDOT pdf)
  • This illustrates the importance of keeping the bridge open to cyclists during construction, as is the plan. Even as traffic is limited to one direction, bicyclists and pedestrians will be allowed to cross the bridge in both directions. With hundreds of bikes per hour, it’s a vital link in the regional bicycle infrastructure.
  • Finally, the roadway is currently more efficient at carrying bicycles than motor vehicles. 707 vehicles use two lanes per hour, at a rate of 354 per hour. Bicycles use one lane, and there are (by my assuredly crude calculations) 360 bicyclists. But wait! Aren’t traffic lanes a lot wider than bike lanes? Yes. 360 bicyclists traverse the Longfellow in only 5 feet of bridge width, at a rate of 72 vehicles per foot. The 707 cars have 24 feet of bridge width, a rate of only 29 vehicles per foot. Even if we assume 1.25 people per car, bicycles are still twice as efficient at transporting people. (And, yes, the Red Line inbound, in 14 feet of bridge width, transports more than 10,000 people, making it ten times as efficient as the bike lane.)
Of course, the bike lane is certainly not at capacity (neither are the vehicle lanes; although the Red Line is quite crowded). Leaving two lanes for vehicular traffic in the new bridge design is contentious, and a single-lane design with a wider, buffered bicycle facility—akin to the outbound side of the bridge—would do more to encourage cycling. Even narrower lanes—and a wide bike lane—would help cyclists (and slow speeding motorists, as well). But even without that encouragement, bicyclists don’t seem to be shunning the Longfellow.

On US Olympic Bids

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The Boston Globe has a column today about US Olympic bids, touting smaller cities chances at bidding for the summer games, including Boston. While Boston could probably hold a summer Olympics (hey, Atlanta did to, well, not quite universal acclaim), it might be a bit of overkill. The city doesn’t need the new baseball stadium (well, it does, but Fenway will live forever) that Atlanta did to justify building an Olympic stadium, the transit system would be strained between venues. While some sports, like rowing and sailing would have terrific natural venues, others, namely high profile events like swimming and track and field, would require major stadium investments the city does not need to make. (The timing would have been right around 2000 to build a stadium the Patriots could have then used, but they have a perfectly good field in Foxboro.)

Plus, the 2024 Olympics are probably not going to go to the US anyway. The bids for 2020 are down to Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid. Rumor has it that the IOC may look more towards Africa and Asia beyond then, particularly if Tokyo or Madrid wins in 2020. And while it is true that the US will not have hosted a summer games in 28 years, they hosted in 1984 as well (so that makes two in 40 years) and a city would probably have to come in with a strong bid to have a chance. (Chicago and New York flailed for 2012 and 2016.)

The winter games, on the other hand, might make more sense to bid. First of all, there are many fewer cities which can host a winter games. South America, Australia and Africa are out. In recent years, the IOC has moved away from awarding the games to tiny alpine towns as the games—and lucrative spectators—have grown. While the next two Olympics are in smaller cities, they are nowhere near the towns of a few thousand which hosted the games in 1992 and 1994. (Pyeongchang is quite small, but the indoor events in 2018 are taking place in the larger city of Gangneung.) In addition, the trend in recent years has been to have valley-mountain Olympics, where indoor-based venues are held in one location (generally in a city) and outdoor events held at a location further afield.

The Winter Olympics generally rotate between Europe, Asia and North America. The North Americans would be up for the games again in 2022, but a bid appears unlikely, and a European city (Munich was second in 2018 and would be a strong contender, as would Oslo and others) will likely see the games. In 2016 it will have been 16 years since a North American Winter Olympiad, and 24 since the games were held in the US.

So a US city would be a strong contender with a good enough bid. Unlike the summer Olympics, which can be held pretty much anywhere, there are a few course requirements which dictate where the winter games can be held (in addition to the need for snow). The first is the Downhill ski event, which requires a vertical drop of at least 800 meters (2600 feet). A not-high-or-steep-enough hill has been a thorn in the side of Quebec City’s hopes for the games (even though it would otherwise make a great host); Montreal would have to look south across the border for enough elevation and multinational bids are not well-received by the IOC. The second issue is that there is an altitude limit of 1800 meters (5800 feet) as the maximum height for cross country ski courses, so while they don’t need to start much lower (they only need 25 meters of climb) this becomes an issue for many western venues which only see snow up high. (In 2002, Soldier Hollow just barely squeaked in under the height limit.)

There are also other considerations. A city which would not need to build much new infrastructure (both for indoor arenas and for transportation) would certainly be ahead of a city that did. In addition, it should be assumed that housing for athletes would be built anew and then converted by the city to suit its needs (most of the cities here could use new housing stock). Finally, a city with some winter sports pedigree would be more likely to host the games than one which just happened to be near a ski slope.

Here are some potential cities, and issues which arise with each. I’ve highlighted each category in either Green (good), Yellow (would need some improvements), Orange (could be a major issue) or Red (would preclude the games, such as the ski slope height in Quebec). I’ll assume that, for every location, a Nordic venue would require full snow making.

Boston:

  • Alpine: Several locations within 2-3 hours have adequate elevation, but may require new construction, potentially in an ecologically sensitive area.
  • Nordic: Several potential locations near the city.
  • Indoor Arenas: Existing arenas could be used with minor modifications.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure could handle in-city traffic, modifications may be required to outlying events.
  • Other: Strong local winter sports history, especially hockey. 
New York:

  • Alpine: While there is a potential location in the Catskills, it is an ecologically sensitive area and there would likely be dramatic opposition to construction there. This might preclude New York as a candidate. (Large-enough downhill venues in New York or Vermont are several hours away and would require major infrastructure investments to be nearby, although a joint Placid/NYC bid might be doable.)
  • Nordic: Several potential not too far from the city. If you wanted to get creative, you could hold cross country ski events in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx adjacent to the 1 Train, home to what is probably the world’s most famous cross country running venue, which has the requisite climb (this might requiring transporting snow from off-site). This would require using the bridges over the Henry Hudson Parkway, but at 11m wide, they’d be plenty wide enough to meet standards, and the park has enough topography for the necessary climbs. (edited 2018)
  • Indoor Arenas: Existing arenas could be used with minor modifications.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure could handle in-city traffic, modifications may be required to outlying events.
  • Other: Strong local winter sports history, especially hockey.
Albany:

  • Alpine: Whiteface is about 2 hours from the city and could be used.
  • Nordic: Several potential locations near the city.
  • Indoor Arenas: New infrastructure would likely be required to handle events. Some events could be held in New York City arenas, but this would create a long distance between outlying areas.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure would need to be significantly upgraded.
  • Other: A small city without much major winter sports pedigree.
Minneapolis:

  • Alpine: The highest elevation in the state is 2300 feet. The lowest is 600. In the state. (This would kill bids from other Midwestern cities as well).
  • Nordic: Several potential locations in the city.
  • Indoor Arenas: Existing arenas could be used with minor modifications.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure could handle in-city traffic, modifications may be required to outlying events.
  • Other: Strong local winter sports history, especially hockey and Nordic skiing. 
Denver:

  • Alpine: Many locations nearby.
  • Nordic: Areas below 1800m receive very sporadic snow and would require new construction and massive snow making / snow hauling efforts. However, such an area, unless it was easily accessible to the urban core, would not be utilized after the games as there is natural snow skiing nearby.
  • Indoor Arenas: Existing arenas could be used with minor modifications.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure could handle in-city traffic, modifications may be required to outlying events.
  • Other: Strong local winter sports history, especially hockey and Alpine skiing. However, Denver bid for and then turned down the 1976 games, which is still a cause of bitterness with the IOC. They would need a very strong bid to overcome this. (Colorado’s politics have changed dramatically, however, in the past 40 years.)
Salt Lake City:

  • Alpine: Many locations nearby
  • Nordic: Soldier Hollow.
  • Indoor Arenas: Existing arenas could be used with minor modifications.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure could handle in-city traffic, some modifications may be required to outlying events.
  • Other: The city hosted the games in 2002, and the USOC would probably want to run another city’s bid if it were up to snuff. 
Reno:

  • Alpine: Many locations in the Tahoe area.
  • Nordic: All developed Nordic areas are well above 5800 feet (the level of lake Tahoe is 6200). A new area would have to be built at a lower elevation where snow would be more sporadic and require snow making, and would not be used after the games because there is good natural snow nearby.
  • Indoor Arenas: New infrastructure would be required.
  • Urban Infrastructure: New infrastructure would be required.
  • Other: While the Lake Tahoe area has a strong winter sports pedigree, Reno itself does not. 
Seattle:

  • Alpine: Many locations nearby
  • Nordic: Several mountain locations
  • Indoor Arenas: Most existing arenas could be used with minor modifications, but a new ice arena might be necessary.
  • Urban Infrastructure: Existing infrastructure could handle in-city traffic, modifications may be required to outlying events.
  • Other: While the mountainous areas near Seattle have a strong winter sports history, Seattle itself does not—for instance, it is the only large city on this list without a professional hockey team.
Looking at this list, Minneapolis would be out lacking mountains and New York likely would as well (unless it partnered with Lake Placid, which would vault it up the list, given, for instance, that there are three major ice arenas Brooklyn, Manhattan and Newark). Reno and Albany are both rather small, and each has a venue issue (Reno with no low-enough Nordic venue, Albany with a far-away Alpine hill). That leaves Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Boston. Denver and Salt Lake both have historic issues. Salt Lake hosted recently and the US would probably want to run another city. Denver would make a fine host (with the exception of finding a suitable Nordic venue) but 2026 would be the 50th anniversary of their snub (the only time a city has turned down the games) and the IOC holds grudges almost to the degree that they take bribes.
So that leaves Seattle and Boston. Seattle would make a fine host, although it doesn’t have a strong winter sports history to the extent that some other cities do (for instance, it has no major pro or college hockey team) and thus might need a major new ice venue. So that leaves Boston.
Boston, I think, would do well with the winter games. With several college venues, the city would have no problem hosting the indoor sports; there are several arenas that could host curling and speed skating (with the added bonus of curling fans in Canada being a not-too-long car trip away). Preliminary hockey rounds could be held in cities across New England (Providence, Hartford, Worcester, Burlington, Manchester, Portland) bring the Olympics to nearby cities and freeing up venue space in town for skating events. Like any new Olympic city, Boston would have to build a sliding center to accommodate the sliding events, and ski jumps for jumping. Oh, and a speed skating event. That brings us to the Nordic and Alpine venues.
There is a website promoting the 2026 games (which has a Facebook page, too—with more likes than the summer page—and an article about it) and it hits on some of the same issues I do here. It promotes Fenway as an Olympic stadium (that would be fun; it did host the Winter Classic a few years back) but it sort of glosses over the Alpine and Nordic events. It mentions locations in New Hampshire and Vermont and—that’s about it. In other words, no, please don’t put the Nordic events at Bretton Woods.
Here are some things I think.
For Nordic, elevation is not an issue, except that there needs to be enough height differential for a homologated course. The main issue would be the ability to make and keep snow, and any venue in or south of Boston would be iffy (and climate change could render this whole operation moot). However, to the north and west, it would probably be fine. There needs to be room for 10 kilometers of trail, two stadia (for Nordic and Biathlon) and decent access for spectators. An added bonus would be a location which allowed for continued use after the games. Here are some options:
  • Mary Cummings Park in Burlington is owned by the City of Boston and underutilized. It would have space for stadiums and the requisite elevation differential. It is far enough inland that it is probably cold enough to make snow, there is a major water storage facility which could provide water and pressure. It is not on an existing rail line, but could be connected to transit by buses (in fact, the 350 bus already passes the venue hourly). Politically, it’s owned by the City of Boston but barely used for anything, so it might be easy to redevelop for active recreation. Along with Prospect (below), it is probably the closest feasible venue to Boston.
  • Just as close, and also somewhat underutilized and owned by the City of Waltham, Prospect Park could have a heck of a cross country course. There has been a move in recent years to steeper hills, and a course which climbed the old ski hills a couple times would really test the skiers. Transit is a bit of an issue (the 70A passes nearby, and the southern end of the park is only a mile from downtown Waltham) although a light rail or commuter rail spur could be built along the old Mass Central to serve the southern end of the park. (This could actually be built as a loop branching off of the current Fitchburg Line just west 128 and looping back through North Waltham; three miles of existing right of way would not be terribly expensive.) A temporary stadium could be built in the parking lots of some of the nearby office parks to the west of the park, which would also have spectator parking. The park already has several manmade structures (water tanks, radio towers and the like) but would need to have trails built, although it could enhance the current eroded trails, especially along the old ski hill. Snowmaking might be an issue, but it’s no warmer, really, than Mary Cummings.
  • Great Brook Farm State Park has a ski concession and the requisite elevation (barely). Snow making temperatures would not be an issue, but water capacity might. Transportation capacity is limited, although buses from rail lines nearby would be feasible, albeit on narrow roads. In addition, building trails in the park might be an ecological issue in the rural town. 
  • Wachusett Mountain would be a fine location for a Nordic venue. Elevation is available to the northwest of the mountain or east (south of Wachusett Lake) or northeast of Route 140. It would also have room for a sliding facility and jumping area. It is further from Boston, but if combined with snowboarding and some smaller-hill ski events it could justify a four-mile rail spur to serve the complex. Such a spur could be utilized in the future to serve this facility. This would probably be the best option.
  • The Wapack Range has the requisite snow and elevation for Nordic venues, although it would be constrained by infrastructure with steep, narrow roads. Windblown was talked about as a Nordic venue a few years ago, and Mount Watatic in Massachusetts might be suitable a well, but Wachusett seems like a better bet.
  • The Merrimack Valley in New Hampshire would have several potential venues near potential rail transit and current highways.
  • Brattleboro has an existing ski jump which could be used for jumping events. It’s only an hour drive from Wachusett (albeit on Route 2) and the state and feds are putting a lot of money in to upgrading the rail line from Springfield to Vermont, which is within a mile of the ski jump.
  • Further north in New Hampshire, several current ski areas could host events, but obviously are further and have more access issues.
Here’s how the Wachusett area could be set up to host jumping, sliding, Nordic and smaller downhill and snowboard events:

View Wachusett in a larger map

For Alpine the main issue is finding somewhere with 800 meters of elevation. I’d suggest holding snowboarding events at Wachusett, and building a sliding, Nordic and potentially jumping area nearby to justify infrastructure improvements (including a rail spur from the Fitchburg commuter line, which could support one-hour rail serve to Downtown Boston). For downhill events, there are several options, but most are further from Boston:

  • There are a couple of resorts in New England with enough elevation to hold an Olympic-level downhill event (or which would need very minor modifications to meet the criteria). They are, however, rather far from Boston. Killington has more than enough elevation, and its main issue is that it is 25 miles from the nearest Interstate (although compared to the Sea-to-Sky highway in 2010, this is a minor issue). More importantly, Killington’s downhill is not well suited for the event. In Vermont, Sugarbush would also qualify, but it is a more-than-three hour drive from Boston. In Maine, Sugarloaf would be a fine venue, but it is four hours from Boston. No mountain in New Hampshire comes close to the required vertical.
  • There are a few areas which have the requisite elevation for a purpose-built downhill slope but wouldn’t be usable for a variety of reasons. Several of these can be tossed out immediately, such as Tuckerman Ravine (which is USFS very-protected land, has frequent visibility issues, avalanches and will not have a lift constructed, ever), Mount Moosilauke (ecological impediments, Dartmouth owns the whole thing) and Camel’s Hump (ecological). Although in Sapporo they did build a downhill course in a national park, and then let it revegetate after the games.
This leaves areas with 2600 foot downhills, good road connections and nearby downhill areas to serve other events. The first two that stick out for me are near Loon Mountain, the north side of the Winooski River in Vermont and Ascutney:
  • Loon is probably the best option. It is a two-hour, all-interstate drive from Boston (and if rail service were extended to Concord, New Hampshire, it would preclude the need to dramatically limit traffic on the gridlocked southern portion of I-93; the venue itself would be accessible by rail, although it might be a good excuse to extend carpool lanes and use them for bus service during the games) and the current mountain could easily support every event except the downhill. One option would be to build a new trail from the top Scar Ridge just east of Loon to the Kancamagus highway below. This would have a major visual impact, however, and would barely make it to the requisite height requirement. It would, however, require only one new lift from the current summit of Loon. The second Loon option would be to look across the valley. It would require a new trail to be built on the southern flank of Mount Liberty, but this construction would not impinge on the current Osseo hiking trail, and would rise only to about 3800 feet. It would require a stadium below, but this could be built somewhere in the vicinity of the condo developments along the Kancamagus. The hill would have southern exposure, and require snowmaking to guarantee snow. With both there options, the main issue would be ecology and forest service bureaucracy—they both extend in to the fragile subalpine zone and any trees cut would take years to regenerate even if the trail was only used for the one event. 
  • Another option is along the Winooski River in Vermont. Just south of Bolton Valley, there is just enough elevation to run from about 3000 feet to the Winooski River below. It would require a short lift from the Bolton, and would have minimal impact since the construction would be limited to mostly northern hardwood forest areas (rather than subalpine timber, and not forest service land). It is only about three hours from Boston, and all on the interstate, and is on a current passenger rail route as well. It too has southern exposure, however, which would be a consideration for snowmaking. 
  • A third option is Mount Ascutney in Vermont. Ascutney had a ski area in operation until quite recently, but this would not likely suffice for a downhill run. It had a vertical drop of just 1800 feet, and while it could be extended to the top of the mountain, that would only add about 500 feet. The Northwest side of the mountain, where it is located, bottoms out at 800 feet, and with a summit elevation of 3100, it would be hard to squeeze in 800m (2624 feet). The east side, however, holds some promise. The mountain drops off quickly in to the Connecticut River, which is below 400 feet, just enough vertical drop to qualify (and likely the lowest elevation base for an Alpine run in Olympics history). A ski run could be built along the current road and power line which reach the top of the mountain, which would minimize ecological impact. The trail could be built mostly on the northern side of an east-running ridge, so snow retention would not be a major issue. The base of the run would end at Interstate 91, so access would be less of an issue. It’s not a straight shot from Boston but all on highways. There is a nearby rail station in Claremont and the rail line runs across the river, but it would be a push to have service from Boston (the direct rail connection via Concord was abandoned years ago; service could be run via Worcester, Amherst and Brattleboro). 
Obviously this is just a tiny piece of the puzzle—a Boston Olympiad would have many other hurdles to overcome. But as far as bidding for the summer games versus the winter, I think the winter makes much more sense. Most of the in-city venues would be in place; the only requirements would be a speed skating facility (under $100m in recent games, and convertible to a variety of other uses). Conte Forum, Agganis Arena, Conte Forum and Matthews Arena could be used for events like curling and short track, while the TD Garden hosts marquee events like ice hockey and figure skating. (The DCU and Dunkin Donuts centers in Worcester and Providence could also host larger events; they have higher capacities than the venues in town.) The Olympics are fraught with cost overruns and whether it’s a good idea, financially, to host is up for discussion. But Boston would have to build no new venues in the city (in 2014 and 2018, nearly all venues will be newly-built) and wouldn’t have to cut entirely new alpine ski trails (also the case in 2014 and 2018). Thus, the city could, with minimal investment (certainly less than the $50 billion being spent in Sochi), put on a formidable games, and might be the best contender in the US to host.

Putting pencil to paper, and looking at what other recent venues in Western Hemisphere (Salt Lake and Vancouver) have spent, here’s a quick ballpark:

Arena events:
Vancouver: Rogers Arena, capacity 18,000 and others (capacity 6,000 to 14,000)
Salt Lake City: Maverik Center, capacity 10,000
Boston: TD Garden (final games), DCU Center and Dunkin Donuts Center (preliminary games)
Comments: Being a hockey hotbed (moreso than, say, Salt Lake) hockey would likely be well-attended. There would be no issue filling up venues in Worcester and Providence, which are right near rail stations with easy service to Boston. The Garden could be used for skating for most of the games, and then hockey for the final games. Smaller events (curling, short track, ice dancing) could be held at Conte, Matthews and Agganis, and potentially at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell.

Freestyle Skiing / Snowboarding:
Vancouver: Cypress Mountain
Salt Lake City: Deer Valley
Boston: Wachusett
Comments: I assume that Wachusett’s 1000 feet of vertical is enough for these events. They’d probably take over the mountain for two weeks, but I’m sure Wachusett would like the free publicity and infrastructure improvements. Cost to retrofit the mountain: $10m.

Alpine Skiing: See above. If you could hold the downhill somewhere like Sugarbush, you could probably get away with minor additional costs. If you wind up building a new downhill run, it may well run $50m.

Nordic Skiing: The cost to build Soldier Hollow was $22m (about $30m adjusted for inflation). The venue in Whistler included ski jumps and cost $120m.

Jumping: If you build it in Brattleboro, maybe $10m to upgrade the facilities there to Olympic standards. If you have to build it from scratch somewhere like Wachusett, it’s probably another $50m. In Utah, the jumping venue was paired with the sliding venue and cost $75m in the late 1990s, so about $90m today.

Sliding: The Whistler Sliding Centre cost $105m to build. If a Wachusett-area venue could share infrastructure with nearby events, it might cost somewhat less.

Oval: The skating oval in Salt Lake cost $30m, but in Vancouver cost more than $150m. These are the biggest arenas for the winter games, and they’re pretty useless for anything else. It is highly doubtful that the Reggie Lewis Center or even the BCEC could be retrofitted, so you’d have to build this somewhere it could be converted to a better use, or somewhere out of the way enough where you’d want a bunch of indoor sports fields. Figure $100m, minimum.

So for the arenas, you get:

  • Freestyle/Snowboarding: $10m
  • Alpine: $10m-100m
  • Nordic/Jumping/Sliding: $100m-200m, depending on whether you use Brattleboro and how you combine the venues.
  • Oval: $100m-150m
  • Olympic stadium: I think we can all agree on Fenway, figure $30m-40m for that.
So, give-or-take, you have a range of $250m to $500m for the venues. That’s peanuts, compared to Sochi.
But then you have the other expenses. You have to build a village (I’d volunteer the Beacon Park area for this), figure $1b for that (although it can then all become housing, so it might be a wash). My pet project would be grade separating the Grand Junction to allow rapid-transit service from Allston to Kendall to North Station. Figure $1b there, but that dramatically improves mobility and capacity for the T. If you had events in Providence, Worcester and Lowell, it would be a great excuse to electrify and upgrade those commuter rail lines, which would be $2b, but would dramatically improve service on those lines as well.

So that’s $4b of infrastructure. Add in 10% contingency, and it costs you $5b. Oro 10% of Sochi, and you’re not left with a bunch of hotels no one will ever use again.

The cost of doing nothing

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The worst traffic in New England is on I-93, going north and south into and out of Boston. When highways were canceled in 1970s and money put towards transit, I-93 was left doing the duty of two highways south of the city (since the Southwest Corridor was nixed) and four to the north (where Routes 2 and 3 were meant to access the city via Cambridge, and Route 95 was to be routed over the Northeast Expressway). The phrase that comes to mind is “three quarts of [something] in to a two quart pail.” There is simply not the roadway capacity to handle the traffic on this road in the morning or evening, there are choke points at other interchanges, and as a result traffic is backed up for several hours each morning and evening, turning a 60 minute drive from Manchester to Boston in to a two- to three-hour ordeal.

The corridor from Concord, N.H. to Boston has frequent bus service, but these buses sit in the same traffic as everybody else until a short carpool lane just to the north of Boston. There is no rail service beyond Lawrence and Lowell, meaning that alternatives to driving require many motorists to travel I-93 to some extent. New Hampshire is spending $800 million to widen its section of the road, and is leaving space for future rail transit and building bus park-and-ride facilities. However, under the previous Republican administration, the state refused to study rail transit service. That vote was reversed recently, and New Hampshire will commission a study of rail service north of the border. *

As usual, opponents come out of the woodwork whenever transportation dollars are slated to be spent on anything other than King Car. “Where are you going to find a few million dollars?” they exclaim, “When you just spent a billion on widening a roadway!” It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars! A boondoggle! It will never pay for itself!

Tell me, again, who is paying the billion dollars to widen 93? Oh, wait, that is a necessary public investment.

There are several salient issues here:

  • Widening the roadway in New Hampshire makes some empirical sense, and going northbound will eliminate a traffic-knotting lane drop at the border. However, the bigger issues have to do with infrastructure further south in Massachusetts not being able to handle more cars from the north. So widening the roadway will not aid many travelers, and may in fact make overall traffic worse where people want to go.
  • I-93 would be a good candidate for a proper HOV, or perhaps HOV/Toll lane, which would aid bus traffic and encourage carpooling, and given the number of buses on I-93 would benefit a high number of road users.
  • In regards to rail, and to echo a frequent sentiment at the California High Speed Rail Blog, the cost of doing nothing is not zero. In other words, if there are no changes made to transportation between New Hampshire and Boston, there are significant costs which New Hampshire will incur. We’ve already seen that the cost of widening I-93 in New Hampshire is nearly $1 billion. What are the costs of poor access to the Boston job market for New Hampshire residents? Of lower property values because of decreased demand due to this limited access? Of time spent in cars in traffic for hours per day? Of tourists who don’t take a weekend trip because of traffic on Friday evening?
First, how widening in New Hampshire doesn’t help traffic down south, or the three quarts in a two quart pail issue. New Hampshire can widen I-93 within its borders all it wants, but driving solely I-93 in New Hampshire gets you from nowhere to nowhere. No offense meant—there are not the major, growing job centers in Southern New Hampshire as there are in Massachusetts. Much of the traffic on I-93 is destined for offices along 495 and 128 in the Bay State, or further south in Boston. Adding space on this section of I-93 will ease some congestion in the state, but it will only lead to more cars traveling southwards in to an existing wall of traffic. The utility of the road for everyone, but especially for New Hampshire commuters, is not enhanced by this project.
Every morning, from 6 a.m. until 9, 10 or even 11, traffic on I-93 grinds to a halt. It first slows in Lawrence, where traffic backing up off of I-495 can slow the commute. Even as the roadway widens from three lanes to four, traffic slows south of 495 as it approaches the wholly inadequate interchange at 128, where traffic backs up off the mainline and through the tight cloverleaf. From there, traffic sometimes eases through the Middlesex Fells, but the roadway then narrows from four lanes to three, one of which is a carpool-only lane. Although traffic no longer backs up off of the Central Artery (which cost, ahem, $15 billion to replace), it’s sufficiently squeezed down that there are only so many cars which can find their way in to the downtown tunnel. Mitigating the 128 interchange is no easy task and will probably cost on the order of $200 million or more. Adding capacity to the roadway through Somerville is a non-starter, and this squeeze will probably never be expanded.
There is a way to increase the utility of the highway without widening it, which is to change the demand model for the roadway by introducing an HOV facility. Right now, there is a 2.5 mile long carpool lane on the southbound side of the roadway from Medford to Boston. This saves carpoolers, and buses, a few minutes on their morning commute, since the lane starts before the Somerville lane drop. However, it is otherwise inadequate in several manners. It provides no access to the Storrow Drive off ramp, which serves major employment centers in Boston and Cambridge. It also reintegrates traffic on to the Central Artery where it has to merge across several lanes to exit. Most importantly, however, it starts far too far south, and during peak hours the traffic jam starts far before the lane becomes available. Oh, right: there’s no HOV lane going northbound.
I-93 is the most heavily-traveled interstate bus corridor in to Boston of any length. Between 7 and 10 each morning, 27 buses travel from 495 to Boston (mostly private carriers from Hanover, Concord, Manchester, Nashua and Andover, Mass.). Another 21—Logan Express and MBTA—enter at or near 128, and 21 more MBTA buses enter the roadway in Medford. Most of these buses sit in traffic with everyone else. Once they access the carpool lane, and assuming they are operating at or near capacity, they transport 3500 people—about 1200 per hour, even though there is only a bus every three minutes. The capacity of a lane full of single occupancy vehicles is only about 1800, and in heavy traffic, it’s less. A better facility might also see buses coming down I-95 shift to 495 and 93 to avoid traffic on Route 1 as well, and encourage more people to ride.
And these are the statistics without any major benefits for ridership. These buses cope with the same traffic as everybody else in the morning and in the evening. Their operators are hamstrung by unpredictable traffic conditions which can cause schedules to run an hour late, or more. And there is no real time savings for riders. There is definitely a cost benefit versus driving, but the buses can’t go any faster than cars on their own. However, an HOV lane the full length of I-93 in Massachusetts would dramatically improve these commutes. It could be built for minimal cost by cannibalizing a lane off the current roadway. It would only require infrequent entrances, and exits before Boston would have to be minimized to preclude the possibility of the mainline backing up in to the HOV lane. It would allow buses to standardize schedules, and attract new ridership based on time savings—many of whom would otherwise be on their own in cars on the road. 
An HOV lane would also attract carpoolers, and to keep the traffic flowing a minimum of three passengers might be feasible during high demand times. This might encourage slugging from these far-flung park-and-rides in to the city. If the time savings were high enough—and at times avoiding traffic on I-93 can save an hour or more—many single-drivers would be keen to grab a couple of new friends for the ride.
Finally, this project could be paid for by tolling the carpool lane depending on the traffic conditions. At certain times of day, allowing single drivers to travel the length of the lane for $10 or more would raise significant revenue and allow those who wanted to avoid traffic to do so. While often derided as “Lexus Lanes” such a system would be optimized first for traffic conditions and then for revenue. If the HOV facility was near capacity from carpools and buses alone, the price could be astronomical. If the rest of the road was mostly free-flowing, it would be low enough to entice a few drivers to save a few minutes without breaking the bank. And revenue from this lane could go to paying for the initial improvements, as well as funding parallel transit options.
Finally, The Cost of Doing Nothing Is Not Zero. Basically, inaction on transit in this corridor will have negative repercussions throughout the region. Quashing a study because rail will require a subsidy (as opposed to $800 million highway widening projects, which apparently pay for themselves) is as bad policy as it is politics. Rail service would provide access to jobs in Boston from New Hampshire, but also access to job sites in New Hampshire from Boston. In theory, rail service would run express from Boston to Lowell in 40 minutes or less, and then provide access to the Spit Brook Road area, Downtown Nashua, Manchester Airport, Downtown Manchester and Concord. With gas prices poised again to break $4 per gallon, precluding access except by car—even to dense, downtown areas—is a good way to stagnate long-term growth.
New Hampshire has to realize that most of its population lives within the “commute-shed” of downtown Boston, and it is inextricably linked to the larger city to the south, even as it derides it with shouts of Taxachusetts and worse. If New Hampshire’s goal is to provide better access on I-93—and it seems that it is—it has to have some sort of alternative from Massachusetts to actually improve the access that I-93 provides. Whether this is a high occupancy facility or rail transit—or some other mode—is a valid question. Whether it should be studied, however, is not.

( * It should be noted that while the Amtrak Downeaster services has several stops in New Hampshire, it is funded solely by the State of Maine. New Hampshire benefits dramatically from the service, which transports hundreds of Granite Staters to Boston every day.)

Why doesn’t the MBTA run a “snow map”?

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The great Livable Streets Alliance shared a story on their Facebook page about how pre-emptive MBTA shutdowns are a new phenomenon in Boston. They asked if we agree with the decision, or if we think the T should keep the system running as long as possible. I started posting a long answer there and later decided that it belonged here. With pictures.

Pre-emptive shutdowns are not a bad idea in theory and certainly make it easier to reopen the system. Some sort of shutdown is probably beneficial, but the T may have overreached in this instance and shut down the system for a longer period than absolutely necessary. And that should be the real question: is it absolutely necessary to passenger safety and the integrity of the system to shut it down? If so, where and when? And whether the system is shut down should be the answer to these questions. In this case, I think that the answer was certainly that, yes, for a time much of the system needed to be shut down. (We’re talking mainly about rail transit; bus service is far harder to run on unplowed, narrow, snow-covered streets.) But the T was probably shut down longer than necessary, and should have a better policy in place to ensure the least possible interruption to service.

In the case of the recent storm, there were three main areas where the T could have kept service running better:

  • A later shut-down
  • An earlier resumption
  • A “snow map” with underground service
A later shut down:
The transit was shut down early in the storm. At 3:30 p.m., the snow had only been falling for a few hours and only a couple inches coated the ground. In addition, forecasts had predicted the heaviest snowfall for later in the evening—starting around 7 or 8 p.m. Part of the issue was with MBTA employees being able to get home, and not wanting buses to be stuck on the roads. However, MBTA employees could certainly have been deemed “essential” and allowed to drive on the mostly-empty roads, and the T could operate limited service with employees who lived near transit lines later in the day. Since trains ran all night, employees who lived near rail lines could be shuttled home on these non-revenue trains after the end of revenue service. The T could have even put up essential employees in downtown hotels (which might be glad to provide reduced rates if it meant their employees could get to and from work). And obviously there were some employees who ran these trains overnight. Something along these lines would take some advanced planning on the part of the MBTA, but with several days notice before the snowstorm they could have made sure that there was staff on hand to provide minimal service until at least 7 or 8 p.m. 
An earlier resumption:
A major fault in transit service was that it took more than 24 hours after the end of the storm for travel to resume. Certainly part of this was due to the communications tower in Quincy going offline, and obviously there should be redundancy built in to that system. That’s a long-term structural improvement. But trains were operating without this tower (albeit at lower speeds and without passengers) to keep the lines clear. And I’m sure that riders would have been happy to have had service earlier, even if trains had to run more slowly because of the communications issues.
Another issue is snow clearance. At many underground stations, especially on older parts of the system, there are open stairways (Central Square comes to mind) which drifted full of snow and would be impassible. Exposed platforms would be more cause for concern. Still, it seems that the T waited until the driving ban was lifted before sending out crews to shovel these stations. Considering that it was operating trains throughout the storm, it could have had crews riding between stations Saturday morning, clearing snow as the storm ended and getting service ready for resumption by that afternoon. T employees could certainly be deemed essential and allowed on to the roads earlier.
Some stations are partially open but partially covered (for instance, along the Southwest Corridor portion of the Orange Line). During initial resumption of service, two- and four-car trains could be run while the ends of the platforms were cleared so that service could be run even if the stations weren’t fully shoveled. The situation should be triaged ahead of time. When there is going to be a very heavy snow accumulation—on the order of two feet or more—the T should know which areas will need to be cleared to provide any service, and which are lower priority.
A plan could be put in to place to first clear stations with a maximal cost-benefit ratio for the amount of effort needed to clear the snow and the number of customers served. For instance, the Southwest Corridor of the Orange Line could be prioritized over the outer portion of the Blue Line, since its stations are mostly covered and only portions of platforms would need clearing, and since its ridership is higher. With the prevalence of social media, service could be phased in with frequent announcements as stations reopen.
A “snow map” with underground service:
Source: Greater Greater Washington
Washington, D.C. receives only about a third the snowfall of Boston on average but every few years has a big dump (or, in the case of the winter of 2009 to 2010, two big dumps). The Washington Metro is not designed for operation in heavy snow and will partially shut down when there is more than 8 inches (which, while an annual—and sometimes weekly—event in Boston, occurs once every three years in DC, and a foot only once every eight years). However, the system is partially underground, and those sections are kept functional during storms.
The T doesn’t have the same issues that DC has—MBTA cars have no issue running during storms and keeping the tracks clear. How do I know this? I went skiing during the storm and saw plenty of trains out and plenty of clear tracks. Tthe T even posted video of trains running during the storm. In fact, in 1978, the trains apparently didn’t run (the T was an all-PCC fleet back then, and those smaller-lighter cars may not have been as useful for clearing snow) and the T had to roll out a 1907-vintage snow plow to clear the tracks:
Source: CardCow.com
That’s an amazing photo, and apparently it was taken three days after the snow stopped falling. And it took six hours to plow the line. (I think the only thing that’s changed in this photo is that the overhead wire has been replaced with a catenary.) Even if the trains are running and the tracks are clear, it takes some time to clear off platforms so that people can get on to the trains. When it snows faster than crews can clear, which was certainly the case in this storm, a shut-down makes sense.
Tracks are clear at Longwood Station on Saturday morning, but the platforms are still buried.
Skiers stride Beacon Street on Saturday as a snow clearance train rolls by.
Service would not resume for another 24 hours.
But what about the underground? The core segments of the MBTA run in tunnels, which are, by design, impervious to snow. Most stations have covered entrances, and those which do not could be top priority for shovel teams (Central Square, for instance), or have uncovered entrances temporarily closed (the Church Street entrance to Harvard, for example, or the auxiliary entrance in Kendall closer to the river). Intermediate, uncovered stations (Charles is the only one which comes to mind) could be temporarily closed, and the system could be run on a limited basis. For example:
Base map from Vanshnookenraggen, crudely cropped in, yes, MS Paint
Would this serve everyone? Certainly not. But it does provide service to several important areas, including downtown, Back Bay, Kendall and the airport. It also provides service to near major hospitals which are, of course, open through the storm. (The platforms at Charles could be shoveled to provide service to MGH.) Keeping this much of the system operational—with all-night service in the case of a road travel ban—would be a huge show of good faith by the MBTA and would quell most of the complaints that they aren’t doing enough to keep service running. It would also serve many travelers who have no other option during the storm. It, too, would take some advanced planning, but would provide better service.
I hope that, for the next storm, some of these steps will be taken. For instance, if service was better matched to the start of heavy snow and run through rush hour, then curtailed to underground portions of the system for the storm and then phased back in during the afternoon on Saturday, there would have been many fewer complaints about the overall storm service on the MBTA. This is not to say that the T didn’t do a good job—having full service on Monday took quite a concerted effort. (In addition, overall kudos to MassDOT: the highway shutdown meant that, unlike in New York, cars were not stranded in snow drifts on main highways.) It would be nice, however, to have a better plan of action for future storms.

The Amazing Lack of Density of the Boston Fed

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The three tallest buildings in Boston are:

  1. The John Hancock Tower at 790 feet with 60 stories
  2. The Prudential Center at 749 feet with 52 stories
  3. The Boston Fed at 641 feet with 32 stories
Their floor-area ratios (the amount of interior space they have relative to their overall ground footprint) are:
  1. 25.44 (see here)
  2. 5.93*
  3. 4.34 (see here)
* This includes the entire Prudential Center, which has a footprint of over 1 million square feet, or 100,000 square meters. Much of this is retail space; the office portions are much higher. See section 2-8 of this report.
The Pru sort of gets an out. It was built on former rail yards and above a highway, it’s had more density added in recent years, and a lot of it is an indoor shopping area and supermarket. In addition, it’s better oriented itself to nearby streets in recent years (although it certainly has a ways to go to integrate in to the neighborhood). 
The Fed doesn’t. It has a big outdoor plaza and a small, low-rise conference center and … not much else. There’s a nice plaza outside (we wrote about it’s many bollards) with an adjacent entrance to the subway. (Interesting to note that the three tallest buildings in town are all within a block of a major transit node.) But transit is a great place to build dense buildings. You don’t need a lot of parking spaces, as innumerable people can walk through the doors without major congestion. Maybe you won’t build the Hancock tower. But a FAR of 4? That’s no improvement over the low-rise buildings the site replaced. It’s not as bad as a suburban office tower surrounded by parking lots, but for such a tall building, it has a large footprint, and surprisingly little inside space.

The Amazing Bollards of the Boston Fed

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Bollards—those vertical posts used to keep cars off of bike trails or separate lanes of traffic—are also used to protect sensitive buildings from vehicular incursions. Many government buildings—and most of the city of Washington, D.C.—are surrounded by steel or concrete posts. In most cases, these are architectural afterthoughts, and in many cases they are ugly as sin. While they seem to crop up everywhere, their use, especially after incidents like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, is probably justified in some situations. They are relatively inexpensive, don’t impede pedestrian flow, and are quite effective (i.e. not just security theater).

Left: Ugly-as-sin bollards at the Tip O’Neill Building near North Station (probably added after construction). Right: Boring bollards at the newly-built Moakley Courthouse on Fan Pier.

And they don’t have to be ugly as sin.

Take, for example, the Boston Federal Reserve bank. Considering it is one of 12 banks in the country charged with distributing the nation’s cash supply, you probably don’t want people to be able to ram a car in to it. The modernist building is striking—it’s by far the tallest Federal Reserve Bank branch in the country and one of the tallest buildings in the city of Boston—so it has quite a bit of symbolic value. For a variety of reasons, you don’t want cars driving in willy-nilly. (If you do drive in, you go through a heated inspection building where they inspect your vehicle, including peering underneath with mirrors on sticks.)

Around the time of the Big Dig (check it out on HistoricAerials, or this picture from the installation firm) the plaza around the building was rebuilt, and instead of a bunch of concrete or aluminum-and-steel bollards, the landscape architects got creative. There are no fewer than 15 distinct types of bollard (!)—or other fencing with a similar function—combining different materials and serving multiple purposes. Many of these are cleverly camouflaged in to the landscape. You still get the idea that they don’t want you trying to ram through the doors in a car, but it’s not as ugly or overbearing as most such security.

I noticed this (yet again) coming back from a talk by Julie Campoli, who has cataloged housing types and walkability beautifully in presentations and books, and decided to do something similar with the Fed bollards. Here is a compendium, with descriptive names I made up.

Left: Steel-and-bench
Center: Single-indent concrete
Right: Double-indent concrete

Left: Slate-with-bench
Center: Wide steel
Right: Marble and stacked-slate

Left: Upside-down boat keel
Center: Square steel
Right: Big round planter

Left: Trapezoidal-ish steel
Center: Boat keel with bench
Right: Torpedo/candlepin bowling pins

Left: Beveled concrete with square holes
Center: Corners with benches
Right: Beveled concrete with extending benches

There would be a larger project here to walk (or bike) around the city and find all the different examples of anti-vehicle security. Maybe when it’s above 20 degrees.
Walking around the Fed, you get the idea that someone put some thought in to the landscape. It is a large and looming building (it’s tall and attractive, but it looms) but the plaza is built to a human scale without being monotonous and without losing its security purpose. There are a multitude of materials (granite, slate, concrete, aluminum, steel, brick, grass), shapes and sizes. Much of the plaza is functional. Benches provide a place to stop and sit. Trees provide shade. And it’s unobtrusive (unlike the horrible Tip O’Neill balls o’ concrete or the mid-sidewalk steel bollards down Atlantic Avenue at Rowes Wharf). Hopefully new buildings, when they need this type of security, will have some scrutiny as to how it is designed. This is a good example.
Now, there’s the argument that this site sacrifices a lot of density by having this big plaza, and despite the height of the building its floor-area ration (FAR) is not that high, only about 4:1! (In other words, if there was a four story building built across the whole site (which is what this building replaced) it would be denser, despite the fact that this is the third tallest building in the city! But at least the security outside is pleasant.

What do you do with $13 billion

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The Big News today is that the governor of Massachusetts has finally begun to detail how we are going to fund some sort of barely-functional-at-least transportation system in the Commonwealth. (No specifics on which revenue streams will be pursued, only that some will. Here’s to hoping we take the easy and best route.) More specifics are coming soon, but the state offered up a bit of a wish list of major projects these additional revenues could help fund (such as rebuilding the entire MBTA rail fleet and the bus fleet for RTAs across the state).

Now, this is obviously the first step in a game of political football, and certainly won’t be whatever is inked later this year (hopefully). Various interests (and even Republicans) will have their say, although business leaders seem to be all for increased funding and drivers may even grudgingly accept higher taxes. That can wait.

For now, I took the “wish list” and broke it down in two ways. First, I looked at each line item and what it funded: Air, Transit, Bike/Ped and Highway. I broke the transit out in to “existing” and “new” as the funding divides between improving existing services (such as replacing 40-year-old rail cars) and new funding for transit services which do not yet exist. This was a rough exercise, and certainly there is overlap (local highway funding will include bike/ped improvements, rail extensions will improve service on inner portions of the line) but it gives a good idea.

The second thing I looked at was whether each item benefited one region or multiple regions. This was even rougher. Some projects are statewide, some fund specific projects in multiple regions, and some are region-specific. The categories here were “Multiple Regions” (which includes statewide projects), “Non-Boston Area” (RTAs, mostly), “Boston Area”, and the West and Southeast parts of the state. There were no projects which specifically served the central or northeast regions, although they would be served in the statewide categories.

My quick takeaways:

  • More transit than highway, by an almost 2-to-1 margin.
  • No new highway construction—just rebuilding bottlenecked intersections. As far as I can tell, not even any highway widenings.
  • Bike/ped is a small percentage, but the raw number—$430 million—is quite big. Hopefully the $1 billion slated for local roadway improvements is mandated to create complete streets as well.
  • Most of the funding goes to the Boston area or the state as a whole; the big chunk for the Southeast is for the South Coast Rail project (and, yes, we can discuss whether that is a good use of funds later).
  • This is a pretty good start. Hopefully the highway lobby won’t throw up their hands and demand more roads, especially since bicycle and pedestrian projects create more jobs than highway projects.
  • This is a good start—but, yes, a start—towards tripling non-auto mode share in the Commonwealth (also see the linked article for Davey’s read-my-lips-no-new-superhighwas quote).

Failures in mapping

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Just, yuck.

I was on the Silver Line today (mostly a failure on its own, but it does get you to the airport) and noticed what has to be one of the worst maps I’ve seen in recent memory. It’s a map of Logan Airport, located in the Silver Line platform area at South Station. It has some useful information, but it is so cluttered and so ill-presented that it might as well be in Greek. Or Swahili. It’s just a horrible representation of the information a transit traveler would need to navigate the airport.

  • It’s not to scale. That’s fine, but certain parts of the map are so not-to-scale that they are misrepresentations of where features are located. For instance, did you know the Airport Blue Line station is located right next to Terminal E? Neither did I. Hey, maybe you can walk there!
  • It implies that the Airport MBTA station is not in between the ramps in to and out of the airport from Route 1A. It is.
  • The bus routes on the map are incomprehensible. Lines which shouldn’t cross do cross, there are no arrows showing that the system is one-way, and there are some places where lines representing bus routes just end (look above the cell phone lot, for instance). And the Massport bus makes a big sweeping loop over itself for no apparent reason.
  • The color scheme is … gray, gray, gray, black and so-dark-a-blue-that-it-looks-black. But the terminals are colorful! Too bad we can’t really tell much else apart. Like the airport routes and the Silver Line.
  • Terminal A is shown with its auxiliary gates, but there’s no gate detail for any other terminal. This is extraneous, and confusing; who cares what’s on the other side of security when you’re standing at South Station. Also, Terminal B isn’t shown as being two separate stops, it is just a big B in the middle of the parking. (Oh, and don’t worry, because when you get to Terminal B and don’t know which stop to get off at, there’s a chance the audio announcement will be through the whole list of airlines by the time the bus leaves the station.)
  • There are way too many roads. I don’t care how roads loop around and over each other to get to Boston. Or where car rentals are. Or even where the parking garages are. If I’m in the Silver Line Station, I’m probably not driving to the airport. I know this may be a stock map of the airport, but in that case it doesn’t belong at South Station.
  • The Silver Line routes to and from South Station should be labeled as such. They don’t even say “South Station”! Instead it’s labeled as “To South Boston.” That’s pretty misleading. Although not as misleading as calling the Ted I-90 and I-93. That’s just plain wrong. Again. Silver Line, not driving.
  • Okay, so maybe the I-93 and I-90 belong with the “to South Boston,” as in “to 90 and 93.” But it’s not to I-90, it is I-90. It’s to I-93. In any case, there should be some differentiation between what it is and what it is to. Good lord, can it get any worse?
  • And once you get to South Station, what line to you transfer to? Beats the hell out of me. God forbid they put in something about the Red Line.
  • In fact, the only time a T logo appears on the map is down at the Blue Line Station. Is there anything about that being the Blue Line? Nope. There’s some text off in the corner but this is a schematic map. Oh and the label for the station? About half way across the map. But if you were at South Station, you might see the T, and wonder if you’d wind up there after your trip. Negative.
  • Can you walk indoors from Terminal C to Terminal E? I have no idea. And this map doesn’t really make it seem one way or the other. Or let you know that you can take a sidewalk between these terminals.
  • The blue lines showing elevated, inter-terminal walkways are one of the better features of this map. However, even here the symbology is not consistent. Sometimes they end in blue circles. Sometimes the line just ends. Sometimes the line ends in the middle of a parking facility (Terminal E) with no cue as to whether you can get to the terminal, where the skyway actually extends (and if you ever miss a Silver Line bus by a hair at Terminal A, you can hustle across to Terminal C or E faster than the bus can round the airport). This is a complete graphic design fiasco!
  • I’m not even going get started on what is going on with the road through Central Parking.
  • It’s all well and good that the South Cargo Area is shown on the map, but I’m not sure how pertinent that is for anyone at South Station.
Now, I’m no graphic designer (see my Hubway data viz if you want proof of this) but in an hour on a airplane I sketched up with a better and more useful map than this. (It’s pretty bad, but not this horrible.)
Perfect? Hardly. But it is superior in every way to the photo above. It drops a lot of extraneous information, but adds in things that make it a lot more useful. Now, Massport, which is swimming in money from parking fees, should design something at least this useful on their own.

UPDATE: Posted a new/better map here.

In other words, #fail.

(As for Logan, a hodgepodge of terminals that makes little sense and is generally added to with little plan for the future, it should be added to Dave Barry’s list of airports that should be “renovated with nuclear weapons”. Although, thanks to the new tunnel, it is now easier to get to from downtown Boston than Colorado, which was not necessarily the case in 1999.)

Yelp Transit Maps

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Yelp-rated routes in Boston. Click to embiggen.

I noticed a while ago—as did some other folks—that Yelp users have been, for some time, rating transit lines. I was intrigued. Here was really interesting data about how people felt about different transit lines, distilled in to a simple 1-to-5 rating. While not every line was ranked in Boston (my first search) there were plenty that were, and I compiled a list of routes, star-ratings and the number of Yelps.

In Boston, only some routes were rated, and they were, not surprisingly, centered in the more student- and hipster-centric part of the city. For instance, no bus line in Dorchester or Mattapan got Yelped, but most in Cambridge and Somerville have many reviews. I figured the best way to show these data was on a map, and after some machinations (especially in resorting the shapefile so the thinner lines would display on top of the thicker ones) I got the map above. It’s pretty cool—click it to enlarge. (Here’s the full MBTA system map if you’re not familiar with the lines; I left off route numbers for clarity.)

But I realized that pretty cool wasn’t cool enough. There was probably a much richer data set out there. Boston has about 750 Yelp reviews, 450 of those for rail lines. Was there city with a wired-in community, lots of bus and transit routes, and high transit ridership? Did I just describe San Francisco to a T? And, voila, there are nearly 2000 Yelp reviews of transit lines in San Francisco, at least one (and usually many more) for nearly every line Muni runs (see exceptions below). (Here’s the Muni system map.)

Muni Lines, as reviewed by Yelp. Click to Embiggen.
San Francisco inset. Click to embiggen.

That. Is. Sexy. The N-Judah has nearly 200 reviews. Wow. And in case the downtown area is too clustered for you, there’s an inset to the right.

I also realized that I had a pretty fun data set here, too. I went to a talk by Jarrett Walker the other day at MIT where he mentioned, amongst other things, that we should not focus on the technology used for transit, but whether if fulfills the mission of getting people from one place to another. In San Francisco, we have a jumble of buses, trolleybuses, streetcars and even cable cars and we have a pretty good way of quantifying whether they are accomplishing the job of transit. (In Boston, even though the B Line serves tens of thousands of passengers a day it manages a 1.36 Yelp rating—remarkable as the lowest possible rating is 1. None of its 34 raters give it a 4 or a 5. Still, it moves a lot of people marginally faster than they could walk.)

First, I averaged the ratings by technology type. Trolleybus route get more reviews than bus routes, probably because they are more heavily used. The average rating for these, however, is quite similar. (The average is a straight average of each line, the weighted average weighs more frequently-rated lines by the number of ratings). Cable cars and PCCs (F-Marked and Wharves) have higher ratings but many are likely by tourists. Light rail lines, however, are frequently rated, and given low ratings, significantly lower than the bus routes.
Vehicle type Routes Avg Reviews Avg Stars Weighted Avg
Bus 39 22 3.03 2.77
Trolleybus 12 41 2.95 2.79
Cable Car 3 64 3.81 3.87
PCC 1 114 3.42 3.42
Light Rail 5 65 2.31 2.43
A forthcoming post will compare local and express bus routes. (Hint: people like riding expresses more than locals.)

I am so interested in San Francisco’s Yelp bus ratings that I’ve tabled the whole of the network.

Line Vehicle Stars # Ratings Line Vehicle Stars # Ratings
1 Trolleybus 2.96 78 48 Bus 2.71 17
2 Bus 2.53 26 49 Bus 2.33 40
3 Trolleybus 4.53 17 52 Bus 2.5 8
5 Trolleybus 2.73 55 54 Bus 2.6 10
6 Trolleybus 2.88 16 66 Bus 4 1
9 Bus 2.42 26 67 Bus 3.4 5
10 Bus 3 24 71 Bus 2.56 27
12 Bus 3.33 15 108 Bus 2.5 16
14 Bus 2.55 44 01AX Bus 3.67 6
17 Bus 3.67 6 01BX Bus 3.31 13
18 Bus 3.25 16 08X Bus 2.56 18
19 Bus 2.66 41 14L Bus 4 3
21 Trolleybus 3.58 31 14X Bus 4 6
22 Trolleybus 2.74 92 28L Bus 4.33 3
23 Bus 3 9 30X Bus 3.2 35
24 Trolleybus 2.81 32 31AX Bus 3.56 9
27 Bus 2.07 28 31BX Bus 3.75 8
28 Bus 2.48 42 38AX Bus 3.71 14
29 Bus 2.5 36 38BX Bus 3.29 7
30 Trolleybus 1.98 82 38L Bus 3.44 61
31 Trolleybus 2.48 23 71L Bus 3.5 10
33 Trolleybus 3.24 33 California Cable Car 4.13 69
36 Bus 2.1 10 F PCC Streetcar 3.42 114
37 Bus 3.42 12 J Light Rail 2.49 45
38 Bus 2.45 119 KT Light Rail 2.13 23
41 Trolleybus 2.82 17 L Light Rail 2.13 38
43 Bus 2.82 28 M Light Rail 2.23 31
44 Bus 2.83 24 N Light Rail 2.55 189
45 Trolleybus 2.62 21 Powell-Hyde Cable Car 3.78 99
47 Bus 2.13 23 Powell-Mason Cable Car 3.52 25

The only lines not Yelped are the 35-Eureka and 56-Rutland. These lines have 30-minute headways (as does the 17-Parkmerced, see this route service chart with headways for all lines) while most lines in San Francisco have service every 15 minutes or better.

Next up: New York’s subways. And beyond.